DOCSLIB.ORG

The Secret Life of Software Communities: What We Know and What We Don’T Know

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Secret Life of Software Communities: What We Know and What We Don’T Know The Secret Life of Software Communities: What we know and What we Don’t know Gemma Catolino1, Fabio Palomba2, Damian A. Tamburri3 Delft University of Technology1, University of Salerno2, Eindhoven University of Technology & Jheronimus Academy of Data Science (JADS)3 [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] Abstract—Communities of software practice are increasingly II. PRACTICAL RECOMMENDATION playing a central role in the development, operation, mainte- nance, and evolution of good-quality software, as well as DevOps A. FACT 1. Software Communities Have Types pipelines, lean Organizations and Global Software Development. Several community types have been studied in organiza- However, it is still unknown the structures and characteristics behind such communities. For this reason, in this paper, we tried tional structures and social networks research - Figure 1 offers to explore the organizational secret of communities, trying to an overview of these types extracted from a systematic studies offer a few practical extracts of (1) what we know and is known, on the matter [11], [12]. In Layman’s terms, a community (2) what we know to be unknown, and (3) what we know to type is a series of characteristics, a pattern, which remain be tentatively discoverable in the near future from an empirical constantly true across the social network underlying that research point of view. Moreover, the paper provides a number of recommendations for practitioners to help and be helped in community. What is still understood fairly little in the state their community endeavors. of the art of software engineering research is that, on the one Index Terms—Community Types; DevOps; Road Map. hand, software communities not surprisingly exhibit the same types already known in literature, but, on the other hand, the I. INTRODUCTION role of community types and characteristics for the benefit Communities are the foundation and backbone of organized (or fallacy) of software code qualities as well as software societies and just as much as our software-driven civil societies processes remains mostly unknown. are dense with communities, the software makers are also What we don’t know: (a) the influence of community types organized into communities of practice (e.g., in open-source), over software qualities as well as the qualities of software of intent (e.g., in standardization groups), of purpose (e.g., processes; (b) algorithms and measurements to precisely pin- as part of agile movements). Recent studies showed how the point type shifts across the community’s life-cycle; (c) design community’s health can reflect the quality of the software patterns for community structures which are contiguous with produced [5], [6], for this reason research community tried to design patterns in underlying software architectures. deeper analyze and characterize the structure of software com- What should practitioners do: (1) follow community munities (i.e., defined as social units of size, dense strongly- tracking and measurement initiatives such as OPENHUB 1 typed and diverse interactions across diverse roles and fluid or BITERGIA 2 to gather insights over their own community characteristics) [12]. and act upon it - this ensures that progress in community In this paper, we discuss about a few basic facts and management, measurement, and steering practices are har- observations about the secret life of software communities nessed; (2) engage in community quality and health initiatives which we were able to empirically establish over previous such as CHAOSS 3 - this ensures that initiatives struggling research studies as well as our own practice as part of software to crack the code of sustainable software communities are communities themselves. well fed with engaged practitioners; (3) manifest their own We outline the roundup to encourage further research into organizational and socio-technical issues as much as the code- understanding and harnessing the (still) very much secret life quality issues - this ensures that social software engineering of open-source communities, as well as their structural, socio- [13] researchers have both quantities and qualities of the right technical, and health characteristics. Furthermore, we aim to data and evidence to study. call for help from the practitioners themselves in supporting their own software community activity and therefore, we B. FACT 2. Types Influence Software Qualities provide practitioners with practical recommendations or calls We conducted several experiments to exploratively figure for help defined with the intent of engaging their interest out the boundaries around the influence that software com- around the matter and/or allowing further understanding their munity types may be playing over the qualities for software needs from a research perspective, such that we as a research production and its maintenance. Figure 2, for example, shows community can aid them in a better fashion. Moreover, we the influence of several types over the rate of re-opened provide a brief road map for further research along this intriguing emerging topic. 1 http://openhub.net/ 2 https://bitergia.com/ 3 http://chaoss.community/ Fig. 1. An Overview of Community Types from the State of the Arts [12] issues investigated over 25 open-source communities sam- What we don’t know: (a) a general quality model of what pled according to community participants age, size, gender software qualities are influenced by which community struc- diversity, community programming language, type of product, ture qualities; (b) which community structure characteristics geographical dispersion, and activity, the last one measured as play a role for software communities; (c) how to quantify the mean activity stemming from BITERGIA and OPENHUB. what is the additional cost or socio-technical debt connected The Box-plot in Figure 2 was generated by operationalizing to sub-optimal characteristics; (d) how to measure a type and use those measurements as devices for improved governance or organizational structure agility. What should practitioners do: (1) open issues on issue- trackers not only for software code but also for perceived community structure issues - they are as much impactful as they are dangerous and can even lead to breaking the internet (see the NPM incident4); (2) report software community accidents on your version control system as much as you do on STACKOVERFLOW - researchers need to study both to come up with proper empirically established ground truths as well as practical outputs to support your work. C. FACT 3. Types narrow with Practitioners’ Experience Similarly to results in Figure 2, we report that the number of types intermixed in the same community types, that is, the number of attributes diversity across a community reduces as the practitioners’ age (or their experience, skills, community Fig. 2. The influence of community types over re-opened software issues participation). In the same study that led us to prepare the plot in Figure 2, we reported an inverse correlation of ∼ −0:40 a series of metrics to measure essential characteristics from (p-value << 0:05) between the mean developers experience Figure 1 and match them with corresponding types as well as with the community (i.e., the total time they spent working in their mean proneness to re-opening issues, that is, the mean the community) across our projects sample and the amount of ratio of re-opened issues over 6 months worth of releases community types and characteristics that manifest explicitly in the projects lifetime. The plot shows that something is across the community. in fact going on - in this case, the data shows that Formal- What we don’t know: (a) how to quantify mentorship and Networks (second bar from the left) may be exhibiting an experience as assets across software communities and how to organizational behavior which tends to re-open issues more reward both in a proper fashion; (b) how to infer community often than other types. Conversely, the opposite seems true for Informal-Communities (third bar from the left). 4 https://tinyurl.com/yaferj3b evangelists and use them as thought leaders for their software to think that this endeavor is pointless or less important communities; (c) what skills and characteristics matter more than, say, software testing or maintenance, please read your than others in software communities and which skills grow literature, e.g., a couple of hints are in Smite et al. [10] or with age and which others do not, as well as how to foster the [8]. growth and nourishment of skills that cannot grow with time What we don’t know: (a) a systematically-generated, gen- (e.g., knowledge communication) eral quality model for software communities with supporting What should practitioners do: (1) prepare codes of con- evaluation and analytic tools and automatons; (b) a practi- ducts [1] which reflect also the mentorship, governance struc- cal implementation of sustainability in software communities ture, experience and reward management as well as the code which are currently managed in a rather trial-and-error fashion, contribution policies or good-behavior across the community; with due exceptions (e.g., the Apache Software Foundation); (2) make the software code reflect the code of conduct, namely, (c) the dimensions, qualities, and metrics of software commu- use comments in software code to reprimand or exercise social nity sustainability, to be used jointly with a quality model for sanctioning [9], [11] wherefore codes of conducts are violated. performing, long-lived, high-quality software communities. D. FACT 4. Communities with more formal characteristics What should practitioners do: we don’t know, yet. may result more often into abandon-ware III. CONCLUSIONS We observed that 82% of the abandonware communities in As it turns out, there is still information that need to be our sample exhibited a formal type in the last 6 months of their further investigate . As a matter of fact, our non-exhaustive life. This is in line with previous research and observations list cannot convey enough that there is much more we don’t from Crowston et al.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Third-Party License Acknowledgments
    Symantec Privileged Access Manager Third-Party License Acknowledgments Version 3.4.3 Symantec Privileged Access Manager Third-Party License Acknowledgments Broadcom, the pulse logo, Connecting everything, and Symantec are among the trademarks of Broadcom. Copyright © 2021 Broadcom. All Rights Reserved. The term “Broadcom” refers to Broadcom Inc. and/or its subsidiaries. For more information, please visit www.broadcom.com. Broadcom reserves the right to make changes without further notice to any products or data herein to improve reliability, function, or design. Information furnished by Broadcom is believed to be accurate and reliable. However, Broadcom does not assume any liability arising out of the application or use of this information, nor the application or use of any product or circuit described herein, neither does it convey any license under its patent rights nor the rights of others. 2 Symantec Privileged Access Manager Third-Party License Acknowledgments Contents Activation 1.1.1 ..................................................................................................................................... 7 Adal4j 1.1.2 ............................................................................................................................................ 7 AdoptOpenJDK 1.8.0_282-b08 ............................................................................................................ 7 Aespipe 2.4e aespipe ........................................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Web Application for Generating a Standard Coordinated Documentation for CS Students’ Graduation Project in Gaza Universities Ibrahim M
    International Journal of Engineering and Information Systems (IJEAIS) ISSN: 2000-000X Vol. 1 Issue 6, September – 2017, Pages: 155-167 Web Application for Generating a Standard Coordinated Documentation for CS Students’ Graduation Project in Gaza Universities Ibrahim M. Nasser, Samy S. Abu-Naser Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, Al-Azhar University, Gaza, Palestine [email protected] Abstract: The computer science (CS) graduated students suffered from documenting their projects and specially from coordinating it. In addition, students’ supervisors faced difficulties with guiding their students to an efficient process of documenting. In this paper, we will offer a suggestion as a solution to the mentioned problems; that is an application to make the process of documenting computer science (CS) student graduation project easy and time-cost efficient. This solution will decrease the possibility of human mistakes and reduce the effort of documenting process. Keywords: web applications, cost efficient, time-cost efficient, documenting, software engineering, graduation projects. 1. INTRODUCTION Computer science (CS) is the study of the occurrences adjoining computers [1]. It's also defined as the study of computers and computational systems, computer scientists deal usually with software (unlike electrical and computer engineers), Primary parts of study inside Computer Science consist of computer systems, operating systems, networks, database systems, artificial intelligence, computer architecture, security, computer graphics, human computer interaction, systems analysis, software engineering, theory of computing and programming languages [11,17-28]. In computing, a web application is a client–server application that means, the client (like user interface) works in a web browser [2]. The general distinction between a web application and a dynamic web page is vague, web sites that we can name them as "web applications" are those have comparable functionality to a mobile application or to a desktop applications [3].
    [Show full text]
  • 2002 USENIX Annual Technical Conference
    Announcement and Call for Papers 2002 USENIX Annual Technical Conference http://www.usenix.org/events/usenix02 June 10–15, 2002 Monterey Conference Center, Monterey, California Important Dates Three days of tutorials start the conference receive notification by Friday, November 23, FREENIX Refereed Track submission deadline: with practical tutorials on timely topics. The 2001, please contact: [email protected]. November 12, 2001 three-day technical session of the conference Papers should be 8 to 12 single-spaced 8.5 x General Session Refereed Track submission follows and includes a track of General Session 11 inch pages (about 4000-6000 words), not deadline: November 19, 2001 Refereed Papers selected by the Program counting figures and references. Papers longer Notification to authors: January 22, 2002 Committee; a track of Invited Talks by experts than 14 pages and papers so short as to be FREENIX Track papers due for final and leaders in the field; and FREENIX, a track considered extended abstracts (e.g., five pages or shepherding approval: April 8, 2002 of refereed papers on freely available POSIX- less) will not be reviewed. Camera-ready papers due: April 16, 2002 based software and systems. It is imperative that you follow the General Session Refereed Papers instructions for submitting a quality paper. Conference Organizers Specific questions about submissions may be The 2002 USENIX Technical Conference seeks Program Committee: sent to the program chair via email to: original and innovative papers about the Chair: Carla Ellis, Duke University [email protected]. applications, architecture, implementation, and Darrell Anderson, Duke University A good paper will clearly demonstrate that performance of modern computing systems.
    [Show full text]
  • Ian Parmenter Approved: Professor Lee A. Becker
    Project Number: LAB-99MP -.5 / MAJORING IN PIRACY An Interactive Qualifying Project Report submitted to the Faculty of the WORCESTER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Science by Ian Parmenter Joshua Colson Date: October 15, 1999 Approved: Professor Lee A. Becker, Project Advisor -2- Abstract A look at the state of piracy on college campuses finds that the policies used to inform students just what is acceptable are sorely lacking. These policies are reviewed and analyzed, and a generic policy is put for as being an ideal choice to base college policies off of. A thorough review of literature on campus piracy is given, along with results of surveys on the matter. Table of Contents 1. Introduction 4 2. Background 5 2.1 Organization 5 2.2 Defining Software Piracy 5 2.3 Defining Copyright Piracy 6 2.4 Extent of Campus Software Piracy 6 2.5 Methods of Software Piracy 8 2.6 Methods to Combat Software Piracy 10 2.7 Methods to Combat Copyright Piracy 14 2.8 Arguments over Software Piracy 15 2.9 Conclusion 16 3. Methodology 17 3.1 Literature Search 17 3.2 Student Survey 17 3.3 System Administrator Survey 19 3.4 College Software Policy Analysis 23 3.5 Methodology of the Generic Policy 23 4. Results 24 4.1 Student Survey 24 4.2 College Software Policy Analysis 29 4.3 Ideal Generic Policy 33 5. Conclusion 36 6. Bibliography 37 -4- Introduction The goals of this project are: to provide a review of college policies regarding piracy; to show that the average college policy is lacking in what needs to be included to help stem piracy; to put forward a generic policy that can be used by colleges and universities to help educate students and prevent the spread of piracy.
    [Show full text]
  • An Extreme Programming Method for Innovative Software Based on Systems Design and Its Practical Study
    International Journal of Software Engineering & Applications (IJSEA), Vol.5, No.5, September 2014 EPISODE: AN EXTREME PROGRAMMING METHOD FOR INNOVATIVE SOFTWARE BASED ON SYSTEMS DESIGN AND ITS PRACTICAL STUDY Takaaki Goto 1, Kensei Tsuchida 2 and Tetsuro Nishino 1 1Graduate School of Informatics and Engineering, The University of Electro- Communications, Japan 2Faculty of Information Science and Arts, Toyo University, Japan ABSTRACT In software development, the waterfall model is commonly used, especially for large-scale software systems. For smaller-scale software development, agile software development approaches such as extreme programming or scrum are used. Traditional software development methodologies are mainly targeted toward customer-centric development, and therefore, new software methodologies are often not well received in the industry. In this study, we propose a new software development methodology that is aimed at developing innovative software using artificial intelligence (AI), idea creation, value engineering, and systems design. The name of our method is named as EPISODE (Extreme Programming method for Innovative SOftware based on systems DEsign). EPISODE supports the efficient and creative development of open source software (OSS) by small groups. Moreover we describe an evaluation of EPISODE in a class. KEYWORDS Software Development Methodology, Value Engineering, Open Source Software 1. INTRODUCTION In software development, the waterfall model is commonly used at present. Recent years have, however, witnessed the increasing use of agile software development methodologies, especially for small- or mid-scale projects and even in some large-scale projects. Both the waterfall and agile software development models feature developers and clients, where the developers obtain the project requirements from the clients.
    [Show full text]
  • Schaum's Outline of Software Engineering.Pdf
    Y L F M A E T Team-Fly® Want to learn more? We hope you enjoy this McGraw-Hill eBook! If you’d like more information about this book, its author, or related books and web- sites, please click here. SCHAUM’S OUTLINE OF Theory and Problems of SOFTWARE ENGINEERING This page intentionally left blank. Theory and Problems of SOFTWARE ENGINEERING DAVID A. GUSTAFSON Computing and Information Sciences Department Kansas State University Schaum’s Outline Series McGRAW-HILL New York Chicago San Francisco Lisbon London Madrid Mexico City Milan New Delhi San Juan Seoul Singapore Sydney Toronto McGraw-Hill abc Copyright © 2002 by The McGraw-Hill Companies,Inc. All rights reserved. Manufactured in the United States of America. Except as per- mitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. 0-07-140620-4 The material in this eBook also appears in the print version of this title:0-07-137794-8. All trademarks are trademarks of their respective owners. Rather than put a trademark symbol after every occurrence of a trademarked name, we use names in an editorial fashion only, and to the benefit of the trademark owner, with no intention of infringement of the trademark. Where such designations appear in this book, they have been printed with initial caps. McGraw-Hill eBooks are available at special quantity discounts to use as premiums and sales promotions, or for use in corporate train- ing programs.
    [Show full text]
  • Master Thesis Innovation Dynamics in Open Source Software
    Master thesis Innovation dynamics in open source software Author: Name: Remco Bloemen Student number: 0109150 Email: [email protected] Telephone: +316 11 88 66 71 Supervisors and advisors: Name: prof. dr. Stefan Kuhlmann Email: [email protected] Telephone: +31 53 489 3353 Office: Ravelijn RA 4410 (STEPS) Name: dr. Chintan Amrit Email: [email protected] Telephone: +31 53 489 4064 Office: Ravelijn RA 3410 (IEBIS) Name: dr. Gonzalo Ord´o~nez{Matamoros Email: [email protected] Telephone: +31 53 489 3348 Office: Ravelijn RA 4333 (STEPS) 1 Abstract Open source software development is a major driver of software innovation, yet it has thus far received little attention from innovation research. One of the reasons is that conventional methods such as survey based studies or patent co-citation analysis do not work in the open source communities. In this thesis it will be shown that open source development is very accessible to study, due to its open nature, but it requires special tools. In particular, this thesis introduces the method of dependency graph analysis to study open source software devel- opment on the grandest scale. A proof of concept application of this method is done and has delivered many significant and interesting results. Contents 1 Open source software 6 1.1 The open source licenses . 8 1.2 Commercial involvement in open source . 9 1.3 Opens source development . 10 1.4 The intellectual property debates . 12 1.4.1 The software patent debate . 13 1.4.2 The open source blind spot . 15 1.5 Litterature search on network analysis in software development .
    [Show full text]
  • Licensing Information User Manual Oracle® ILOM
    Licensing Information User Manual ® Oracle ILOM Firmware Release 3.2.x October 2018 Part No: E62005-12 October 2018 Licensing Information User Manual Oracle ILOM Firmware Release 3.2.x Part No: E62005-12 Copyright © 2016, 2018, Oracle and/or its affiliates. License Restrictions Warranty/Consequential Damages Disclaimer This software and related documentation are provided under a license agreement containing restrictions on use and disclosure and are protected by intellectual property laws. Except as expressly permitted in your license agreement or allowed by law, you may not use, copy, reproduce, translate, broadcast, modify, license, transmit, distribute, exhibit, perform, publish, or display any part, in any form, or by any means. Reverse engineering, disassembly, or decompilation of this software, unless required by law for interoperability, is prohibited. Warranty Disclaimer The information contained herein is subject to change without notice and is not warranted to be error-free. If you find any errors, please report them to us in writing. Restricted Rights Notice If this is software or related documentation that is delivered to the U.S. Government or anyone licensing it on behalf of the U.S. Government, then the following notice is applicable: U.S. GOVERNMENT END USERS: Oracle programs (including any operating system, integrated software, any programs embedded, installed or activated on delivered hardware, and modifications of such programs) and Oracle computer documentation or other Oracle data delivered to or accessed by U.S. Government
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction of Software Engineering Concepts for Electrical and Computer Engineering Students and Application to Senior Projects
    Paper ID #29402 Introduction of Software Engineering Concepts for Electrical and Computer Engineering Students and Application to Senior Projects Dr. Danielle Marie Fredette, Cedarville University Danielle Fredette received her Ph.D. degree from The Ohio State University’s College of Engineering (Columbus, OH) in 2017, her M.S. also from The Ohio State Univeristy in 2016, and her B.S.E.E. from Cedarville University (Cedarville, OH) in 2012, during which time she participated in research as an intern at the Air Force Institute of Technology at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, OH, in the Radar Instrumentation Lab. While researching for her Ph.D, she was a University Fellow and then a GATE Fellow with The Ohio State University’s Center for Automotive Research and its Control and Intelligent Transportation Research Lab. She is currently serving as an Assistant Professor of Electrical and Com- puter Engineering at Cedarville University. Research interests include control for multi-agent systems and autonomous ground vehicles. Nathan Jessurun, University of Florida Nathan Jessurun received his B.S. in Computer Engineering from Cedarville University in 2019. Currently he is a PhD candidate at the University of Florida, working toward a degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering. His research interests include x-ray and terahertz wave applications, multi-modal imaging, tomographic reconstruction algorithms, and machine learning applications. c American Society for Engineering Education, 2020 Introduction of Software Engineering Concepts for Electrical and Computer Engineering Students and Application to Senior Projects Danielle M. Fredette, Nathan T. Jessurun Cedarville University Abstract This paper describes results of incorporating basic software engineering principles into the senior design curriculum for electrical and computer engineering students who have no prior software engineering exposure.
    [Show full text]
  • An Environment for Comprehending the Behavior of Software Systems
    An Environment for Comprehending the Behavior of Software Systems A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Drexel University by Maher M. Salah in partial fufillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy July 2005 c Copyright 2005 Maher M. Salah. All Rights Reserved. iii Dedication In memory of my Mother (1935-1992) iv Acknowledgements I would like to express my deepest gratitude and appreciation to my advisor Professor Spiros Mancoridis, who inspired my interest in software engineering and software comprehension. Prof. Mancoridis has spent countless hours of discussions of all aspects of my research. His continuous support, encouragement and guidance are admirable. Also, I would like to thank the other members of my thesis committee: Dr. A. Shokoufandeh, Dr. E. Gansner, Dr. V. Prevelakis, Dr. F. Vokolos for their input and thoughtful feedback. I would like to thank two former committee members, Dr. Hewett and Dr. Souter, for their input and contribution to my work. I would like to thank and recognize Dr. Vokolos, Dr. Shokoufandeh and his graduate student T. Denton for their contribution and the countless discussion sessions I had with them. I am grateful to the National Science Foundation and Lockhead Martin Corporation for sponsoring my equipment and travelling expenses to attend conferences. I would like to express my gratitude and appreciation to the University of Pennsylvania Health System for their sponsorship and the financial support throughout my journey. Also, I would like to thank all members of the Web Applications Group. Specially, I want to recognize Mark Newman and Ying Xing for making work a little bit more fun.
    [Show full text]
  • The Secret Life of Software Communities: What We Know and What We Don’T Know
    The Secret Life of Software Communities: What we know and What we Don't know Gemma Catolino Fabio Palomba Delft University of Technology University of Salerno [email protected] [email protected] Damian A. Tamburri Eindhoven University of Technology and Jheronimus Academy of Data Science (JADS) [email protected] driven civil societies are dense with communities, the software makers are also organized into communities of Abstract practice (e.g., in open-source), of intent (e.g., in stan- dardization groups), of purpose (e.g., as part of agile Communities of software practice are increas- movements). Recent studies showed how the commu- ingly playing a central role in the develop- nity's health can reflect the quality of the software pro- ment, operation, maintenance, and evolution duced [1,2], for this reason the research community has of good-quality software, as well as DevOps tried to deeper analyze and characterize the structure pipelines, lean Organizations and Global Soft- of software communities (i.e., defined as social units ware Development. However, the structures of size, dense strongly-typed and diverse interactions and characteristics behind such communities across diverse roles and fluid characteristics) [3]. are still unknown. For this reason, in this paper, we tried to explore the organizational secret of communities, trying to offer a few In this paper, we discuss about a few basic facts and practical extracts of (1) what we know and observations about the secret life of software commu- is known, (2) what we know to be unknown, nities which we were able to empirically establish over and (3) what we know to be tentatively dis- previous research studies as well as our own practice coverable in the near future from an empiri- as part of software communities themselves.
    [Show full text]
  • The Current State of Software Preservation Nicole Contaxis, National Digital Stewardship Resident at the National Library of Medicine
    Contaxis 1 The Current State of Software Preservation Nicole Contaxis, National Digital Stewardship Resident at the National Library of Medicine Executive Summary Software preservation is an important part of the stewardship of cultural, scientific and social history. This report outlines several ongoing projects and their preservation strategies. While many of these strategies include preserving software as an interactive digital object, strategies that simply document the software, like recording game play in online video games, are also included. The paper begins by outlining key tools and concepts as well as the over-arching obstacles to software preservation, including a lack of contemporaneous documentation, the wide variety of use cases for software, and copyright. Afterwards it discusses three categories of software preservation projects: software collections in libraries and archives, digital art conservation, and computational reproducibility. With in-depth discussions of the benefits and problems with many of these projects, the paper discusses how different strategies best serve different types of software, institutions, and budgets. Both technical and administrative strategies are considered. Projects addressed include the National Software Reference Library (NSRL), the Olive Archive, Emulation as a Service, the work at Rhizome, the Game Play Capture Project at the Strong Museum of Play, the Astrophysics Code Library (ACL), and others. Introduction Preserving software is a vital aspect of the stewardship of cultural, scientific, and social history. The 2015 National Agenda for Digital Stewardship calls for serious action in the realm of software preservation. It states, “[Software] is both the key to accessing and making sense of digital objects and an increasingly important historical artifact in its own right.”1 The document argues that preserving software is necessary for two reasons: (1) it is a cultural artifact worthy of historic study in its own right; and (2) it is a means to access data and content held in obsolete formats.
    [Show full text]